Rapper 50 Cent reportedly made millions selling his album for bitcoin

The rapper 50 Cent accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album, "Animal Ambition," according to TMZ.

The 700 bitcoins he is said to have raked in are now worth $7 million to $8.5 million, and he reportedly hasn't offloaded his stake yet.

50 Cent looks to have figured out a way to make a killing in the struggling music industry, and it involves everyone's favorite cryptocurrency.

The rapper, best known for his string of chart-topping hits in the early 2000s, accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album, "Animal Ambition," according to a report from TMZ. The digital currency was worth roughly $662 a coin back then, and TMZ cited sources as saying 50 Cent was able to rake in 700 bitcoins.

Now that the red-hot cryptocurrency has exploded higher, trading at about $11,300, a 700-bitcoin stash would be worth $7 million to $8.5 million, TMZ calculates.

This wouldn't be 50 Cent's first time finding himself in a lucrative investment situation. About a decade ago, he became a minority shareholder and celebrity spokesman for VitaminWater, only to make a whopping $100 million after taxes after its parent company was purchased for $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.

While 50 Cent certainly seems to have been ahead of the curve in terms of transacting bitcoin, he would not be alone. In a recent op-ed article for Business Insider, the Seattle Seahawks superstar Richard Sherman said his online store started accepting the cryptocurrency "long before people were campaigning for Amazon to allow virtual currencies as a payment method."